The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Don Lemon Is on a Roll

Posted on | April 21, 2023 | Comments Off on Don Lemon Is on a Roll

So to speak:

2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy angered “CNN This Morning” host Don Lemon during a debate on gun rights for Black Americans while on-air.
In the heated exchange, Lemon took offense to Ramaswamy’s recent statements at an NRA conference last week about Democrats in the south instituting gun laws to prevent African Americans from protecting their newfound rights in the post-Civil War era.
Lemon reduced Ramaswamy’s point to a declaration that the Civil War was fought merely to give Black people gun rights and berated him for it, telling him the statement “insulted” him as a Black American.
The CNN host further told Ramaswamy that he had no right to talk about the experience of Black people in America because he’s not Black.
Ramaswamy pushed back and insisted that Lemon was misunderstanding his point.
He also argued that both men should be able to talk about the issue regardless of their skin color.
In the heated crosstalk, Lemon also snapped at his producers who were apparently distracting him over his earpiece.
The intense live debate came after the hosts played a moment from Ramaswamy’s speech to the NRA in Indianapolis.

Need I remind you which show beats CNN in the ratings?

Paw Patrol! Paw Patrol! Whenever you’re in trouble!
Paw Patrol! Paw Patrol! We’ll be there on the double!
No job’s too big, no pup’s too small.
Paw Patrol, we’re on the roll!

Headline: “CNN insiders baffled why network stands by Don Lemon as controversies mount: ‘One of the biggest mysteries’.”



 

 

Category: CNN

Three Hundred Years in Prison?

Posted on | April 20, 2023 | 2 Comments

Earlier this month, two burglars broke into a pawn shop in Macon, Georgia, and stole more than 60 firearms. It did not take long for police to solve the crime. A week later, they executed a search warrant in Cordele — more than 50 miles south of Macon — and recovered about half the stolen guns at the home of 32-year-old Rontavious Jackson. He has been charged with 31 counts of receiving stolen property, 32 counts of possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, and 1 count of theft by receiving stolen property. Every time a mass shooting makes national headlines, Joe Biden issues a statement blaming the NRA and Republicans for opposing “commonsense gun safety reforms,” as if these “reforms” would have prevented the incident in question. But murder is already illegal; why would criminals — who, by definition, do not obey laws — be deterred by new gun laws, seeing as how they’re obviously willing to ignore laws against murder? Of course, anyone expecting logic from Democrats is doomed to be disappointed, but why do the media swallow these bogus arguments for new gun-control laws without question, when the basic flaw of such arguments is so obvious?

However many laws you may impose to restrict the sale of firearms, these so-called “reforms” won’t stop criminals from stealing guns. Just think, for example, about Derrick Gathers, who recently shot a state trooper in South Carolina. The trooper made a traffic stop on Gathers, who was driving 20 mph over the speed limit, with no license and no insurance. Did I mention that Gathers is a convicted rapist, who had warrants out for his arrest in Georgia? It may come as a surprise to liberals to discover that criminals who don’t obey traffic laws also don’t obey gun laws. As a convicted felon, Gathers was prohibited from possessing firearms, so how did he get the gun he used to shoot the trooper? We don’t know the details, but I’d be willing to bet the gun was stolen.

Now we return to the case of Rontavious Jackson, who has been charged with 32 counts of possession of firearms by a convicted felon, each offense of which under Georgia law carries a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison. If courts in Georgia are serious about preventing gun violence, they could sentence Jackson to more than 300 years in prison.

Oh, and in case you forgot, there were two burglars involved in this caper, and the criminals got away with more than 60 guns, which means that Rontavious Jackson’s accomplice might be caught with 30 or so guns and, if he is also a convicted felon, the court could also sentence the accomplice to 300 years in prison. If judges were to start handing out maximum sentences for every case of a felon being caught in possession of a firearm, it would go a lot farther toward reducing gun violence than any of the “reforms” Joe Biden keeps babbling about.



 

 

Category: Crime, Georgia

Portland Is Now a ‘No-Go Zone’

Posted on | April 20, 2023 | 1 Comment

Antifa rioters in Portland, 2018

“Progressives” ruin everything:

When Antifa besieged downtown in 2020, resulting in months of rioting and millions in property damage, President Trump offered to send in the National Guard. City hall refused the help, and vilified Trump instead. A Trump fan wearing an insignia was murdered by a rabble rouser who laid in wait at a parking garage. The killer was later gunned-down by federal agents in a Washington State apartment complex parking lot.
Downtown hasn’t recovered. Businesses are still fleeing. Slabs of plywood cover many street-level windows. Intractable homelessness besotting block after block and open-air shooting galleries have turned Portland into a no-go zone for thousands of locals and decimated the tourist and convention trade. The pandemic played a part in creating the current malaise, but that’s over, and there’s been little discernible bounce-back.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) There are two points that need to be made here. First of all, what part did the COVID-19 pandemic play “in creating the current malaise” in Portland. The answer is that, like most other major cities in Democrat-controlled states, Portland sought to impose maximum lockdown conditions — schools, businesses, etc. — and to keep these draconian policies in place as long as possible. It was not the pandemic, per se, that caused this damage, but rather the punitive job-killing policies enacted by Democrats in the guise of “public health.” And part of those anti-business/anti-freedom policies, of course, involved paying people not to work. If you wonder why all those smelly Antifa morons had so much free time to engage in “mostly peaceful” rioting in the summer of 2020, it’s because they were collecting extra unemployment benefits justified as “pandemic relief.”

Nobody wants to talk about this, for some reason. Like, how is it that there was such a dramatic spike in gun violence and drug overdoses in the wake of the pandemic? Oh, it was free money — i.e., “pandemic relief” payments — that many of the recipients used to buy guns and/or drugs. And don’t even bother to notice who it is that’s getting indicted on charges of fraud for illegally swindling “pandemic relief” programs to the tune of billions of dollars. (Hint: Probably not Trump voters.) When the government is giving away “free money,” it is generally not the most honest and productive members of society who benefit.

Laziness and stupidity are bad enough in their own right; but government-subsidized laziness and stupidity are much worse.

The second point, however, involves something that Andy Ngo pointed out about Portland in an interview with City Journal:

I say that Portland is a city where victimhood ideology is mainstreamed and is normalized, and it flows through the ethos and hearts and minds of the denizens here. So I’ve lived in Portland most of my life and it’s a progressive bubble. . . .
[T]hen the other dimension to it is demography as well, which I don’t hear people talk about as much. So Portland is a majority white city and I think I’ve heard it dubbed as one of America’s whitest cities for the size that it is. So with these two factors together, it creates this element of this extreme white guilt, I would say. I’ve witnessed it a lot and it makes the city vulnerable to radical leftist movements that try to exploit white guilt for their own political gain and I think that’s my analysis for why we’ve seen the leadership of the city kind of take a hands-off approach when it comes to political violence from the far left. Because there’s probably certain, perhaps, sympathies as well as a critical mass of constituents who are supportive of these groups.

Hit the nail on the head there, I’d say. Often, when I discuss the problems of crime, drugs, welfare dependency and the general breakdown of civilized norms, readers may think I’m engaging in racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — as if white people are immune to such problems. But go somewhere like Portland, which is certainly “one of America’s whitest cities,” and there are plenty of Caucasians living la vida ghetto.

Progressivism incentivizes “victimhood ideology” — which is to say, it encourages self-pity and envy — no matter the racial composition of the populace. This is why you find so many aggrieved radicals among the students at “elite” private universities. Students at Harvard, Yale, etc., aren’t rioting because they’re oppressed; they’re rioting because they’re privileged, and because their “progressive” faculty teach them that being an angry victim is heroic. Meanwhile, other people’s kids — the ones who are actually working for a living — don’t have time to riot.

You should buy Andy Ngo’s book, Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, and remember I get a commission on Amazon sales, because capitalism is a beautiful thing.



 

 

Category: Oregon, Progressivism

Teens Charged in Dadeville Massacre

Posted on | April 19, 2023 | 4 Comments

Sgt. Jeremy Burkett speaks at press conference

Breaking news today in Alabama:

Two teenage brothers have been charged with four counts of reckless murder in the Saturday night shooting at a Dadeville birthday party that killed four young people and injured 32 others.
Ty Reik McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, both of Tuskegee, have each been charged as adults with four counts of reckless murder.
The two were taken into custody abut 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Under Alabama law, the crime of reckless murder is committed when a person recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to a person other than himself or herself and causes the death of another person.
“There is a tremendous amount of work to do. We’re going to be careful with everything we say and everything we do. We’re going to stay focused on the victims and their families,” said Sgt. Jeremy Burkett of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.
Burkett said he could not disclose where the teens were arrested or where they are being held. Burkett would not say how many guns were fired or how many shots were fired.
He said investigators are not yet releasing a motive, nor saying how many shooters they believe were involved. . . .

This tight-lipped attitude has been frustrating for much of the public, and Alabama law enforcement is aware of that frustration:

“Please understand with the violence that went on and the magnitude of what happened, we are absolutely still in the early stages of this investigation. This is not the end,” Burkett said. “There is a tremendous amount of work that is yet to be done. We’re going to continue to do exactly what we’ve been doing.” . . .
“I know there has been a frustration… about a lack of communication provided,” said District Attorney Mike Segrest. . . .
Prosecutors will be requesting they be held without bond. . . .
In addition to the four homicides, there are multiple other victims. At least four of the 32 victims remain hospitalized in critical condition. More charges will be filed, Segrest said.
”When I tell you this is just the tip of the iceburg…we’re going to make sure everyone of those victims has justice and not just the deceased,’’ Segrest said. . . .
Dadeville Police Chief Jonathan Floyd said investigators are taking their time to make sure the cases result in convictions.
“This is the very beginning, and we have one chance to get this right,’’ Floyd said.
”We owe it to every person affected to make sure that we’re very slow, make sure we’re very methodical,’’ Floyd said.

Police have previously said that, based on the cartridge casing found at the scene, the shooters used pistols, not rifles. That’s kind of important, considering that the shameless fool Joe Biden used this Alabama shooting as an excuse to blame the NRA and Republicans for opposing “commonsense gun safety reforms,” when there is (as usual) zero evidence that any such “reforms” would have prevented this atrocity. Pretty sure it’s already against the law for minors to be carrying concealed pistols in Alabama and, while we haven’t yet seen mug shots of the McCullough brothers, I’m 99% certain they’re not MAGA-hat-wearing Young Republicans, IYKWIMAITYD. The biggest mystery here is the motive. Tuskegee is in Macon County, about 35 miles south of Dadeville. Why would two teenagers from out of town grab their guns and show up at this “Sweet 16” birthday party, ready to murder everybody inside?

In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, before we had any information about the suspects, my brother Kirby speculated that social media might have played a role in this. Maybe someone who had a beef with the McCullough brothers had posted something saying they’d be at this party, and that’s why they showed up in Dadeville. But wow, what a monstrous way to deal with petty adolescent rivalries.



 

 

Category: Alabama, Crime

An Argument for Gun Control?

Posted on | April 18, 2023 | 2 Comments

Say hello to Derrick Edward Gathers, a registered sex offender from Augusta, Georgia. In 2005, when he was 19 years old, Gathers was convicted of third-degree rape — but this mug shot is not from that case. In April 2020, Gathers was arrested on charges of drug possession as well as possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. However, this mug shot is not from that arrest, either. In March 2021, Gathers was arrested for a parole violation but — as you may have guessed — this mug shot is not from that arrest. Would the reader care to guess what happened to Derrick Gathers in June 2022? If you guessed “arrested,” congratulations. This time, Gathers was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road, with no license, no insurance and an expired tag, as well as fleeing or eluding a police officer.

But the mug shot? Not from that arrest, either.

You may be wondering, what does it take to put someone in prison nowadays? Because here we have a registered sex offender who got arrested three times in the span of barely two years — including charges of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon — and we might imagine that at least one of these arrests would have been enough to put Derrick Gathers away for more than a few months at a time. But, no, because here at last is the crime that led to the mug shot at the top:

The registered sex offender accused of trying to kill a state trooper and a Bamberg County deputy on Sunday will remain in jail until his case is heard in court.
Derrick Edward Gathers, 37, of Augusta, Ga. is charged with two counts of attempted murder and one count each of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime and failure to stop for blue lights. . . .
Those charges stem from a traffic stop initiated by the S.C. Highway Patrol and Bamberg County Sheriff’s Office around 3:30 a.m. Sunday on U.S. Highway 78, on the edge of Denmark, near Best Friend Avenue.
As Lance Cpl. B.A. Frazier approached the Mazda SUV allegedly driven by Gathers, the driver presented a pistol and shot the trooper in the side of his face, according to the S.C. Law Enforcement Division.
Warrants also accuse Gathers of shooting at Bamberg County Sheriff’s Deputy Dwayne Duckson.
Frazier and Duckson returned fire, with bullets striking the SUV.
Other officers pursued the SUV until it crashed into a home in Branchville. Gathers was treated by medics and transported to the hospital, where he stayed until he was booked into the Bamberg County Detention Center at 1:59 p.m. Monday.
The Bamberg County courtroom on Tuesday was filled to standing room only with law enforcement officers in support for Frazier and Duckson.
Frazier attended the hearing virtually from his hospital room where he’s undergoing treatment for a gunshot wound to the right side of his face.
Second Circuit Deputy Solicitor David Miller told the court that Gathers has an extensive record with multiple felony convictions in New York and pending charges in Georgia.
Miller described Gathers a danger to the community.
Miller asked the court to deny setting Gathers’ bond.
[Judge Richard] Threatt agreed.
Gathers has an extensive record that dates back to 2005 in Broome County, New York.
On Dec. 20, 2005, he was convicted of third-degree rape and second-degree criminal sexual act there.
He is a registered sex offender. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Sex Offender Registry, Gathers’ aliases include: “Assassin,” “Tiger” and “Tragedy.”
Miller told the court that Gathers has a warrant for his arrest in Georgia.

Here is the state trooper that Gathers shot:

Highway Patrol Lance Corporal B.A. Frazier

Lance Corporal Frazier is said to be making “significant progress” in his recovery, and I checked the White House press office page to see if President Joe Biden has said anything about this case, but apparently not. Every time a shooting makes the national news, Biden issues a statement blaming the NRA and Republicans for opposing “commonsense gun safety reforms,” but when a convicted sex offender who’s been in and out jail repeatedly for the past three years shoots a state trooper, where is Joe? What does the president have to say about this case? How would his so-called “commonsense gun safety reforms” prevent a lifelong felon like Derrick Gathers — who, by law, is not allowed to possess firearms, period — from committing the crime that finally got him locked up with no bail? Do you see the problem here?

All the gun-control laws in the world won’t stop criminals from committing crime, including crimes with guns, because guess what? Criminals steal guns. The only way to stop this is to put criminals behind bars, but Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to send criminals to prison because “social justice” or whatever. And as a result of this turn-’em-loose policy, cops end up getting shot by criminals who should never have been out on the street. The only way law-abiding citizens can protect ourselves against these rampaging felons is to buy guns — and Democrats want to put us in prison for daring to defend ourselves.

My friend Robert Waters wrote a book, Guns Save Lives: True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms. You should read it.



 

 

Category: Crime, South Carolina

Professor Demonizes ‘Wealthy White Men’ for ‘Violence, Deceit, Irresponsibility’

Posted on | April 18, 2023 | Comments Off on Professor Demonizes ‘Wealthy White Men’ for ‘Violence, Deceit, Irresponsibility’

University of Texas professor Kirsten Bradbury

As recently as 2018, Kirsten Bradbury was paid $105,697 a year as an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas. Bradbury, who also has a private practice in Austin as a clinical psychologist, apparently now only teaches part-time at the university, so that her pay in 2022 was only around $60,000, but still I doubt she could be counted among the victims of oppression, as such things are reckoned by the progressive calculus of “social justice.” Nevertheless, Professor Bradbury wants to make sure her students know who to blame for oppression:

A University of Texas psychology professor is apologizing to her students after including a question on a quiz that stated “wealthy white men” are “most likely to repeatedly violate the rights of others.”
The quiz was a part of Professor Kirsten Bradbury’s Personality Psychology course and asked students which demographic is most likely to be diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder.
After stipulating the disease itself is “a racist diagnosis in the way that it has been applied,” Bradbury’s quiz stated: “Neither race nor gender is determinative in Antisocial Personality Disorder. However, if we must go there, which sociodemographic group is most likely to repeatedly violate the rights of others in a pattern of behavior that includes violence, deceit, irresponsibility, and a lack of remorse?” The answer: wealthy white men.

After distributing the quiz to students, Bradbury, who has been celebrated as one of the university’s most outstanding teachers, then backtracked, telling students that “given the current rate of sociocultural and scientific change” the quiz had “grown too stale to use.” She did not indicate what scientific changes had rendered the quiz obsolete or what scientific research had at one point served as the basis for the question.
Bradbury did not respond to a request for comment.
Bradbury was the recipient in 2017 of the University of Texas Board of Regents’s highest teaching honor, which comes with a $25,000 cash prize. Her biography on the university’s website indicates that her academic interests include “parenting stress,” “firearms and firearm safety,” and “firearm-related parenting.”
The syllabus for her Personality Psychology course, University of Texas-Austin’s psychology 309, indicates that the class aims to teach students about the “normal and abnormal development of personality across the life span” and includes open-note quizzes and self-graded “experiential writing assignments” at the conclusion of which students assign themselves a “journaling grade.”
It also includes a diversity statement voicing the department’s commitment to “a journey of inclusion and justice for all students from groups that are marginalized or minoritized.” It goes on to state, “Our department is in the process of diversifying and creating identity safety for all students.”
“In keeping with the department’s values, I am committed to creating a learning environment that is safe and supportive of the identities and perspectives of all marginalized and minoritized people,” Bradbury wrote.

Any objective inquiry would require us to ask whether the “pattern of behavior” typified by the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder is (a) more common among men than women, (b) more common among the wealthy than among those with lower incomes, and (c) more common among whites than among other races. Only if the answer to all three questions was “yes” could her claim be regarded as true.

Let us consult the Mayo Clinic:

Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to purposely make others angry or upset and manipulate or treat others harshly or with cruel indifference. They lack remorse or do not regret their behavior. . . .
Adults with antisocial personality disorder usually show symptoms of conduct disorder before the age of 15. Symptoms of conduct disorder include serious, ongoing behavior problems, such as:

•Aggression toward people and animals.
•Destruction of property.
•Lying and dishonesty.
•Theft.
•Serious violation of rules.

Antisocial personality disorder is considered a lifelong condition.

Why would Professor Bradbury assert that “the way that [antisocial personality disorder] has been applied” makes it “a racist diagnosis”? Is this something she picked up from an article in an academic journal? If so, could she provide a citation? Some footnotes? A bibliography?

Because I am merely a journalist, and not an academic with a Ph.D., all I can offer is a few results found via Google, including this article in the Journal of Criminal Justice that explores the possible relationships between race, crime and personality disorders, and suggests that “criminology has avoided offering explanations due mostly to political correctness.” Hmmm. Why would someone say that?

Well, it appears there has been great controversy on this subject centered on the work of a British professor, Richard Lynn, who in 2019 published a book, Race Differences in Psychopathic Personality: An Evolutionary Analysis that directly addressed the topic. You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that Professor Lynn has been denounced as being “at the forefront of scientific racism,” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many of my readers will take that as a ringing endorsement — “Denounced by the SPLC? I must buy this book now!” — but probably Professor Bradbury feels otherwise, and I think this is an explanatory clue to the content of that exam question. If there are, as Lynn claims, measurable differences between racial groups in terms of antisocial behavior, then the statistical disparity itself would suffice to render it a “racist diagnosis,” in the eyes of most academics, whose progressive worldview is based on the belief that there is no such thing as real racial differences, but that all such observable differences are caused by systemic racism and the oppression of white supremacy.

Being a mere journalist, I am not qualified to settle such a quarrel among academics, but I do know that if you order Professor Lynn’s book through my Amazon Associates link, I’ll collect a small commission on the sale and did I mention it’s been denounced by the SPLC?



 

 

Category: Education, Racism, Texas

Violent Chaos in Chicago and … Alabama?

Posted on | April 16, 2023 | Comments Off on Violent Chaos in Chicago and … Alabama?

First, the “teenager” problem in Chicago:

Hundreds of teenagers flooded into Downtown Chicago on Saturday night, smashing car windows, trying to get into Millennium Park, and prompting a major police response. At least one person in a car was attacked.
Shots were fired near the corner of Madison and Michigan, and FOX 32 Chicago decided that it was unsafe to keep our news crew on the scene.
Two teens were wounded by gunfire in the crowds in the first block of East Washington Street. A 16 and 17-year-old boy were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in fair condition with gunshot wounds. . . .
A woman whose car was smashed by people jumping on the windshield said her husband was beaten as he sat in the driver’s seat. He’s been taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. . . .
Video posted on social media shows people standing on top of a CTA bus and dancing. The CTA said that some service through the downtown area was disrupted on Saturday night because of police activity.
This is the second time this weekend that a group of rowdy teenagers has prompted a police response. On Friday night, hundreds of kids went to 31st Avenue Beach, and a 14-year-old was shot.

What do we know about these “rowdy teenagers” — something everybody knows, without even having to watch the videos — that the media aren’t reporting? While you ponder that mystery, let’s turn our attention to a town of about 3,000 people in southeastern Alabama:

Four people are dead and as many as 20 reportedly injured following a shooting at a birthday party in Dadeville Saturday night, according to multiple reports.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency reported that at 11:45 p.m. Saturday special agents launched an investigation at the request of the Dadeville police chief.
The shooting occurred at approximately 10:34 p.m. near the 200 Block of Broadnax Street in Dadeville.
“Currently, there have been four confirmed fatalities and multiple injuries,” an ALEA press release stated. “Nothing further is available as the investigation is ongoing.”
The county coroner declined to comment when reached by AL.com this morning.
The Alexander City Outlook is reporting the shooting happened at Mahogany’s Masterpiece dance studio, in a converted bank, on North Broadnax Street in Dadeville, a town of about 3,000 in Tallapoosa County.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is handling the investigation but has not yet released any details. Crime scene tape flapped in the wind outside the venue this morning as people waited for more details.
WRBL of Columbus, Ga., reported more than 20 people were shot and transported to local hospitals, citing law enforcement sources.
The gathering was a Sweet 16 Birthday celebration, and most of those injured are teenagers.

For many years, I have criticized the news media for their use of what I call The Atrocity Narrative method of propaganda:

In a populous nation . . . it is always possible to find a few examples of almost any phenomenon. Police brutality, for example. From time to time, innocent people are killed by police and, if the media are willing to be manipulated by activists, you get protest movements like “Black Lives Matter” promoting the idea that such killings are so routine as to constitute a crisis. Heather Mac Donald has pointed out that a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than the other way around, but during the height of the “Black Lives Matter” riots, a counterfactual narrative was promoted by CNN and other liberal media, inciting a paranoid anti-police rage.

The media’s selectivity in the determination of what constitutes a story of national importance can produce a warped perspective, where 24/7 cable TV coverage is devoted to events that are statistical anomalies, presented as a “crisis” that demands an emotion-driven political response.

Because so much of what people know (or think they know) about the world is derived from media, the willingness of journalists to engage in systematic distortion of reality is harmful to society in many ways, not least of which is its impact on politics. Why are some “mass shootings” more important than others? Why do some “mass shootings” generate media coverage that focuses on the identity and motive of the killer, while others are presented as arguments for gun control? And why are some massacres treated as strictly “local news,” undeserving of national media attention? Americans need to think critically about this:

Crime is a people problem. If you understand nothing else about crime, you must understand this — crime is committed by people. It is not committed by inanimate objects, and while data on criminal activity can be charted as a trend over time, trends don’t commit crimes, people do. There is a word for people who commit crimes; we call these people “criminals” and, if anyone is interested in investigating trends, one trend is fairly consistent — most violent criminals are repeat offenders, and will not stop this behavioral pattern unless they are locked up in prison.
Keep all these facts in mind the next time you hear Democrats or the news media (but I repeat myself) discussing “gun violence” as an issue. Democrats do not want to discuss crime as a people problem, but rather as a gun problem, because (a) most gun owners are Republicans and (b) most criminals are Democrats. Or, that is to say, the violent crime problem in America is largely concentrated in urban areas where Democrats get the majority of the vote. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.



 

 

Category: American Spectator, Crime

Best Aspiring Rapper Update Ever?

Posted on | April 15, 2023 | 1 Comment

‘BTB Savage’ flashing cash on Instagram

Has it been nearly two months since I gave readers an Aspiring Rapper Update? Wow, getting slack in my old age. However, the long wait will be worth it, because this week we’ve got a splendidly complicated tale that involves two Texas rappers getting shot dead, and a third rapper on his way to prison for a drive-by shooting to avenge the first rapper’s death, a justified homicide about which the second rapper had boasted.

First, I must remind you of the Urban Dictionary definition:

Aspiring Rapper
North American euphemism for a member of the urban criminal class. This unusual occupation is usually mentioned in conjunction with the subject either being slain or being taken into custody for a violent or property-related crime. A relative of the subject usually points out that the subject’s demise or incarceration comes at an extremely inopportune moment, occurring just as the subject was “turning they(sic) life around.”

It would perhaps be unfair to include the late Darrell Gentry, a/k/a “BTB Savage,” in this category because Gentry wasn’t just some petty gangbanger, but actually made money from his performances. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, who moved to San Antonio as a teenager, Gentry’s rap moniker “BTB” stood for “break the bank,” which was the title of one of his more successful tunes. Gentry was all about the money, which he enjoyed flaunting on his social media posts. See that watch in the top image? That’s a $25,000 Cartier. Do you have a $25,000 Cartier watch? Not likely, nor do I have a $25,000 Cartier, but this 21-year-old rapper had one, and I’ll keep that in mind the next time some “social justice” type starts lecturing me about my white privilege. But I digress . . .

Gentry’s ostentatious display of wealth probably explains how he attracted the attention of another Texas rapper. One of the ways the rap scene now operates, apparently, is that successful artists get paid for collaborations with aspiring rappers, and this other rapper arranged such a session to be recorded at Gentry’s home studio in his San Antonio apartment. The rapper brought along some buddies, apparently with a motive not to record a hit song, but rather to rob Gentry. One of this crew, 34-year-old Omar “Stew Wop” Richardson, pulled a gun and a struggle broke out. Gentry’s girlfriend somehow got hold of the gun and opened fire. Gentry was wounded in the left arm, but Richardson got shot twice in the back, and was left for dead when Gentry and his girlfriend fled the apartment. Police determined it was a case of self-defense, justifiable homicide under Texas law, and no charges were filed.

Last month, “BTB” Gentry gave an interview about the shooting:

 

That video was released on March 26, at which point, “BTB” had just four days left to live, because how could any rapper resist the opportunity to brag about surviving such an incident? On March 29, “BTB” posted this to his Instagram page (which had more than 100,000 followers):

So there he is, flashing cash in the first image, then standing at the scene of Omar Richardson’s death — blood stains on the floor, bullet holes in the door behind him — with a caption taunting the dead man about “make his momma throw a fundraiser” to pay for his funeral.

Also, “BTB” somehow let it be known that he had relocated to Houston, which information was helpful to one of Omar Richardson’s buddies:

The family of an aspiring San Antonio rapper who was killed last week in a Houston drive-by shooting believes his death may have been in retaliation for a fatal shooting in San Antonio that had been ruled an act of self-defense and for which the rapper openly expressed feeling no remorse.
Darrell Gentry, known professionally as BTB Savage, was fatally shot March 30 in the affluent River Oaks neighborhood in what Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said appears to have been a targeted attack.
Police were called about 6:10 p.m. to the entrance of a parking garage for reports of a drive-by shooting, where they found Gentry with at least one gunshot wound. The San Antonio man, whose identity was later confirmed by the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office, was pronounced dead at the scene. Witnesses said two people fled at high speed in a black Subaru SUV.
On Friday, Houston police said they were looking for Montrel Lenard Burley, 40, saying he has been charged with murder in Gentry’s killing. Police also said at least one other unknown person is wanted in connection with the crime.
Gentry’s mother, Bernita Ward, said on social media that she had warned her son not to speak publicly about the fatal shooting of 34-year-old Omar Richardson, which occurred in February in Gentry’s San Antonio apartment. . . .
“My son allowed his friends and social media to hype him up, and these media blogs paying him money to do interviews talking about the matter,” Ward posted on social media. “My entire family pleaded with him to let the family mourn in peace. … I’m not the type of mother that cover up my child’s wrong. My son made his own choices and, as so many of us, has not always made wise decisions.”

Flashing cash, taunting the dead — hey, by the way, in case you didn’t watch that YouTube interview, this article quotes important details:

Gentry and his girlfriend grabbed their son and ran from the apartment so that Gentry could go to a hospital for his mangled elbow.
Gentry told the interviewer that Richardson at that point was still alive but severely injured and crawling toward the hallway asking for help.
“You could tell the bullets in his back were getting to him. … He was saying, ‘Come on, brother, I’ve got kids too. Let me make it home. Don’t let me die.’ And I said, ‘I don’t give a (expletive) about you. … I hope you die. You were going to kill my son,’” Gentry said in the interview. “I’m not taking you to some hospital. … If they come save you, then they save you, but if not, … it’s your last day.” . . .
Gentry told the YouTube interviewer that when a police officer at the hospital informed him that Richardson had died, he replied, “Good, I’m glad. My son was in there, so I ain’t tripping.
“I went to sleep good as hell the next day,” Gentry said. “I didn’t care.”

While this attitude is perfectly understandable — I mean, you come to my house and try to rob me, I ain’t gonna shed any tears over your death — we can say with the benefit of hindsight that it was a bad idea for “BTB” to publicly boast about it. Meanwhile, his killer was arrested Tuesday:

Murder suspect Montrel Lenard Burley

A man accused of killing Darrell Gentry, a rapper known on social media as BTB Savage, has been arrested, according to the Houston Police Department.
Montrel Lenard Burley, 40, was charged with murder on Friday, April 7 after the deadly shooting on Mid Lane in the River Oaks area at the end of March.
Court records revealed that they were able to identify Burley as a suspect by using cell phone records and license plate readers following the shooting. Burley turned himself in on Tuesday, officials said.
The suspects were driving a black Subaru at the time of the shooting which was spotted in the Galleria area and tracked heading to New Braunfels. . . .
Gentry was shot to death in a deadly drive-by shooting that police called a “targeted” incident in one of Houston’s richest neighborhoods.
Witnesses told police that around 6 p.m., they saw a black Subaru with dark windows pull up next to the victim’s Mercedes, with two suspects getting out of the car, and firing dozens of bullets into the car. . . .
Around 11 p.m. [March 30], surveillance footage from a neighbor in New Braunfels captures a man wiping down a black Subaru inside and out. . . .
Surveillance footage from the same neighbor [March 31] catches a man and woman getting inside a black Subaru just before 7 a.m. The couple was later pulled over by New Braunfels SWAT and found Burley inside the vehicle with a woman who was driving.
According to court documents, both were arrested and Burley was charged with narcotics possession. Burley was questioned about his whereabouts during the shooting but stated he wasn’t in the black Subaru when it happened and that someone asked to use the vehicle. He later asked for an attorney and ended the interview.
Burley’s girlfriend, Passion James, said that the black Subaru was rented from AVIS prior to the shooting because Burley was in a car accident. James also told investigators that she knew Burley had a cousin named “Omar” who was killed earlier this year. James stated she did not know Omar’s last name.
The court documents state that Burley and Richardson were not related, but that they would refer to each other as brothers.
Documents show that a rifle shell casing fell from the rear door of the black Subraru while the New Braunfels Crime Scene Unit investigated during the traffic stop. The shell casing was similar to the ones found at the River Oaks shooting scene. . . .
Gentry’s mother, Bernita Ward, told investigators [April 3] that her son was staying at an Airbnb near the Galleria. Documents say that Gentry was receiving death threats from Richardson’s family members after the February shooting and that she advised him to get away.
Gentry told his mother he was going to head to Las Vegas on March 30 or March 31, before he was killed. His mother said Gentry was on the way to the airport when he was shot.
Burley was charged with murder [April 7] after they confirmed his cell phone and the black Subaru were in the area of Mid Lane at the time of the shooting.
Court documents state that his phone and car were both tracked back to New Braunfels hours after the shooting. Burley’s phone was also tracked to be in the Galleria area for several hours near where Gentry stayed on March 30. . . .
Police are still searching for another suspect who has yet to be identified.
Burley appeared in court Tuesday morning and had his bond set at $1 million.

So, two people are dead, one man is charged with murder, and another suspect is still at large. I blame . . . systemic racism!



 

 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update
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